Our first full day on board was a sea day. The day was chilly and cloudy, we even had rain/snow at times. I had been on the internet at cruisecritic.com chatting with some people who would be on our cruise, and Royal Caribbean arranged a "Meet & Mingle" for us. We met with them and visited for a little while. It was fun to finally put names and faces together and get to know some of these people in person.
The ship was moving pretty quickly as we moved up the Yakutat Bay toward Hubbard Glacier, and as I said, it was chilly. We walked around a little, but mostly sat in the Solarium and sipped hot chocolate as we watched huge chunks of ice float by. The Solarium is a beautiful, lushly decorated, indoor pool area. There was so much ice in the water, we were only able to get within about 1 mile of the glacier. I'm not positive, but I think that's still pretty good. It was amazing how huge it was, even at one mile away! The ship stayed at the glacier for quite a while, and just as we were leaving, we were able to see some pretty good calving. It was a beautiful sight. The beauty and grandeur was simply overwhelming! Yes, it was just ice, blue ice, falling ice and floating ice, but it was still gorgeous.
The next day, Sunday, we were in Juneau. We had some time before our tour, so we walked around town a little. We saw the Alaska Capitol, but didn't make it up the hill to the governor's mansion. I still don't think we could have seen Russia from there though, thank you Sarah Palin! Then we took a floatplane to the Taku Lodge. We spent some time just flying around and sightseeing before landing at the lodge. Seeing glaciers from above sure gives a different perspective from seeing them at sea level. It is a remote lodge, and the only access is by air or sea. It was beautiful. We were able to walk around a bit, and then they served us a salmon dinner. Delicious!! The bears often come down because of the smell of the salmon, but we didn't have any such luck. It was still a great day, and a beautiful location.
We had dinner at 8:30 each night, and after dinner we would usually walk on the deck of the ship. This picture of sunset was taken at 10:30 at night!! It was so cool, because it never really got totally dark, just dusky. I loved the long days and all of the sunshine, but I think I'd be suicidal to live there in the winter with the long nights!!
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